Four reasons PLAY is a better teaching tool than what you use now.

I'm on Spring Break. My wife suggested I take the week off, but I didn't want to do that. I'll be performing the Bach "Magnificat" along with Morten Lauridsen's "Lux Aeterna" in April. I don't imagine I'll be able to write much during that production week, so I plowed ahead - and I purposefully use the word plowed here, because Indiana got 9 inches of snow this weekend. Yeah... break out the skis.

I saw a post on Facebook, perhaps you've seen it too? Supposedly it's an Albert Einstein quote that says, "Play is the greatest form of research." ... something to that effect. I honestly don't know whether Einstein said that or no, but I agree with it. Reflecting on my own experiences verifies it for me. How did I learn to play the piano? I sat down and played it. I played for hours and hours and hours. My parents never one time asked me to stop. Also, they let me play what I wanted to play. Ever-so-often my mom would say, "Did you practice your scales today?" but she never poo-pooed my learning "Cold November Rain" by Guns n' Roses, and I think she was sort of tickled when I figured out how to play Lynryd Skynyrd's "Free Bird".

When I began trying to write music my father procured a copy of a music composing software known as Finale. How did I learn how to use it? I played with it. I put notes on the page and listened to them. When those notes didn't sound good together, I tried other notes until it was just the way that I wanted it. My first compositions were horrible, but now I have published works.

When I started singing, it was a matter of play. My sister and I would drive around in her black Pontiac Firebird Trans-am that looked like KITT from Knight Rider. We listened to Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Aerosmith, and we'd sing at the top of our lungs with the radio. I began to harmonize (because she always sang lead) just messing around; just playing. There is no doubt that much of my musical ability came from those car rides too and from my sister's tennis practices. My life has been forever changed by the musical sense and listening abilities derived from simply driving down the road singing harmony to my sister and Madonna.

I took up the bass guitar at a friends birthday party. He was in a band and they played a few tunes at the party. I felt like the odd man out. When they were done I asked the bassist if I could play around on his bass. He allowed it, and now I play bass guitar in regular sessions both with live bands and in studio.

The point that I'm trying to make is that play is a most powerful teaching tool.

Why? Because of these factors:

First, play is self-motivated. Again, my parents weren't telling me, "Get up there and practice!" I would come home from school and lock myself in the piano room. I needed no motivation, I just wanted to do it. I'm not sure why I felt compelled to do it? It made me feel good, I guess? I like the way the notes go together. I liked that I could manipulate and control the tones. I liked being able to figure out and master some lick that one of the pros played on the radio. I felt a sense of accomplishment. Jane McGonigal, in her TED talk refers to this concept as the "Epic Win" feeling. It felt good to unravel the mystery and replicate it.

How can you set students up to feel that "Epic Win" feeling when they unravel the mysteries of your content? Because if you do this, they will be self-motivated to do more for you. They will want to come to class. They will want to work for you. I'll confess that I have a daily goal for my teaching - I want to have such an impact on students that they are talking about my class at lunch. I want to walk through the cafeteria and overhear conversations like, "Foley's class today blew my mind! We put together _______ with _______ and I totally saw how it was relevant..."  

Secondly, play is safe. I didn't feel bad when I made a mistake at home, I just started again. No one wanted their money back when I didn't play all of the notes correctly. I was at liberty to make mistakes. I need not tell any of you how much we learn from failure. Failure is the greatest teacher. Setting the stage of your classroom to support multiple attempts, in an upward spiral that encourages students, not discourages them, is key.

How can you make your classroom a place where failure is safe? How can you encourage your students to try again and again?  

Also, play is quantifiable. Did you hit the right notes? Did you win? Did you nail the presentation? You know. The feedback is instantaneous. No one has to tell you anything. It is apparent when you have succeeded and when you need to attempt it again. Students need this as well. Self-monitoring is key to education. The teacher can't possibly see and hear everything. It takes students that are honest with themselves to say, "I didn't get that." and self-advocate another attempt, creating solid use of good feedback.

How can you make your class work instantaneously quantifiable? Students need to know right away whether they did it or not so they can either celebrate or re-calculate and re-try. That feedback needs to be honest and quick. If you wait too long, the feedback is stale and the students have moved on. Set yourself in a position to give quick feedback and encourage the students to express their feelings as well. I love it when a student says, "I bombed that, didn't I?" because they know what went wrong. If they know what went wrong, then they also know how to fix it!

And finally, play encourages collaboration. Play alone is fun, but that fun is exponentially better in groups. I mentioned taking up the bass guitar... the first thing that I wanted to do after I learned a few songs was join a band. I looked for guys that were in need of a bassist, and I found them. They had been doing the same things - practicing alone and looking for fellow collaborators.

How can you make your classroom a place where ideas, hypothesis, and theories are tested in such a way that students look for help from one another and from you? Including everyone in the process is a great way to learn. Allow students to pair up. Let them collaborate. Why wouldn't you do this?

All this talk of play makes me want to do just that...

Until next week, from snowy Indiana!

The Hero's Journey in the key of C.

We watched Star Wars in class. I know... it was a terrible waste of time... OR WAS IT?

Currently, my students are executing what my partner, Sarah, and I call, The MYTH Project. It's one of my favorite projects.

The "crime" board

The entry event for this project is quite extensive and requires planning. For the entry event, I created a myth about young man named Les Davis that supposedly went to our school in 1961. The story leads the students to believe that there is buried treasure - or something - somewhere on the school grounds. I tell them that when we renovated our school they found this piece of paper. I show them a school map that I had soaked in coffee and let sit out for a long time. I put a book cipher with the words "School Song" on the map. The book cipher leads the students to the "stage light". The stage light box has another clue - also on coffee soaked paper - that leads the students to one of the school tree lines, depending on which class they're in. When we go to the tree line, the students find a tree that has peculiar markings on it (L.D. and a down arrow that I carved with a pocket knife on a Sunday afternoon three years ago). They search for a shovel, which I had methodically placed in the baseball field's excess sandpit - it just happens to be within site of the marked tree. When they dig, they discover a message in a glass jar that I had buried one month prior to the entry event. This letter tells them to read The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell.

Campbell's book lays out the Hero's Journey. We ask the students to identify stories that share the hero's journey. Then we begin to research and study mythology - but not just mythology - culture, philosophy, and the origins of society. What is good? What is evil? Who decides? How can we be a force for either side? Is there such as thing as neutrality? All of these items become need-to-know questions, and the whole while students are examining themselves to see how they stack up. It's an amazing project.

What is the outcome of the MYTH project? The students have some options: They can create their own myth that follows the hero's journey. They may adapt another myth that we approve, and present that. Or they may simply study and present a myth that they like. In the past we've seen shadow puppet shows, movies, tableaux, staged plays, and some really creative pieces of artwork that included illustrated story books, clay statues, paintings and sketches. We also encourage oral storytelling - utilizing those public speaking skills in an informal way.

Everyone project also has to include music. The mastery level column demands that students perform original music. Students may also orchestrate scores for their project and have a program like Finale play them during their presentation. The presentations are to be timed to the music, just like a movie score, to match the action. Of course, to differentiate, students may also utilize pre-recorded works if they acquire the appropriate permissions to use them. It takes so much work to get the permission that students often opt to create their own music.


Scaffolding for this project comes in several pieces. The first is a mythology gauntlet. Sarah and I pull every book with mythology that we can find from the library. We organize them by geographical location and have the students do a series of Literature exercises at each station. The kids get 12 minutes at each station and we collect their work at the end. Some of the exercises include compare and contrast, crime board mapping, storyboarding, flow charting, mad-libs, analogies, inference, and general reading comprehension and visualization techniques.

Storyboarding

Myth Gauntlet books

Reading 

Hero's Journey Exercise

We also watch Star Wars (IV, A New Hope), stopping about every 5 minutes to ask, "Where are we in the Hero's Journey?"

As students work on their presentations they find themselves needing specific workshops on things like cinematography, movie score writing, hyperscribing, orchestral scoring, creating fake blood, creating fake smoke, script writing, instrumental characterization, text painting, action sequencing, costume/prop/set design, acoustic engineering, oral storytelling, origins of myth, Foley artistry (no relation to me), sound effects use... these are just a few that we have had to deal with this year. Students discussions foray into economics with talk of budgets, time and resource management, casting, and other considerations that go into making a production.

Creating a dragon's head.

Of course, Sarah - in her brilliance - seamlessly works in motif and literary theme. She also gives a killer workshop on allegory vs. metaphor, and she reviews tone, voice, and public speaking skills. I have to utilize the project to teach tonal structures vs. melodic structures and tonicization. This project sets our students up to be able to tackle a large scale film production. Also, we can easily see the public speaking, problem solving, critical thinking, and collaborative skills that students are forging.

 Mr. Foley's white board - post Tonicization workshop

It's too bad these concepts aren't tested on the State End of Course Assessments...

Until next week, friends!

Rubric's Cube

This week I wanted to address a problem that some of you have e-mailed me about; RUBRICS.

I've been teaching in an integrated setting for almost four years. During that time I feel like my colleagues and I have had considerable success teaching students standards-related concepts connecting the arts to English as well as Mathematics. Students seem to be in the process of making aesthetic decisions about what they are seeing, what they are hearing, and what they are saying. They are becoming cognizant of their work, and are beginning to appreciate the quality -- or lack thereof -- of their creations. We decided when we began teaching in this model that the creations themselves were not nearly as important as the process. Indeed, some of the student work is, at times, horrible to look at, but when you ask them, "What were you thinking?" or "Why did you create this?" they will answer you with solid rationale which shows a level of meta-cognition.

My greatest critic is also a good friend. One of her concerns is that the students are creating things simply to appease the rubric. "What about Art for Art's sake?" she asked me recently. Since the students are operating in a STEAM system she feels that the aesthetic power of the art will be deluded by the students' attempt to add the necessary data to fulfill the rubric for the integrated class. For example, The student creates a great song, but has to add superfluous vocabulary words for an English End of Course Assessment prep item that appears on the rubric. The students force-fit pieces into their art to appease us.

Indeed, we have seen work where this has been the case and it is disconcerting. I recall a video where the students made poor decisions in word-choice for the script as well as poor decisions in orchestration and musical form for the background music of their video. When I asked the students to explain their choices they balked. When pressed they finally admitted that they had made the adjustments to their work when they received the rubric. "We sort of had to make it fit the rubric." they told me. "Next time, throw out the rubric." I told them. Their work was great, but it became like a senseless scene from Dude, Where's My Car when they added the rubric patches. 

I can appreciate why they didn't think about ditching the rubric. It takes trust on their end to throw out the mode of assessment and just work. My partner and I utilize the rubric more as a guide for the students to see both the expectations held over us concerning accountability, as well as the goals that we had in mind when we created the project. Ultimately, the students should feel free to create new and interesting things without the fear of failing. We don't want them to feel inhibited by the rubric should their ideas exceed the bounds of what we've asked. The students, though, are not used to this behavior from teachers, so it should come as no surprise when they cling tightly to the rubric.

How do we utilize a rubric as a means of assessment without the rubric becoming a restraint to the creativity of students? 

There are a few ways to solve this problem:

My colleague, Michael Buck, utilizes a process where the students create the rubric themselves. Michael shares the standards that he intends to hit through the project with the students during the opening days of the project, then asks them to come up with a rubric for which they will be accountable to him for the learning of the standards. He gives them the scaffolding, the bare-bones of the rubric, but they must complete it. The genius of this practice is that it causes students to plan what they want to receive points for. They have to know what they're going to do before they create the rubric so they can achieve the credit. Therefore, they are forced to plan. In collaborative settings a student must first get their plans together, organize their ideas, and come to a consensus with their team before they can create their rubric. Michael has lost nothing in this process because he has established a benchmark of targeted standards right from the start. He then facilitates  each rubric creation - differentiating for ability with the students directly.  

My partner, Sarah Papin-Thomas, came up with a second solution one day while we were struggling to help a student that was in a creative slump. The student had been task-listing the rubrics (meaning that he was using the rubric as a check list). This practice is encouraged in some classes, but not ours. We want the students to exceed our expectations, which are located on the rubric, right? So, we took his rubric away and said, "Just do the project." It was too much. The young man panicked and ended up feeling overwhelmed. In the end his group turned in a poor project that they cobbled together through looking at a rubric - which they got from another student. 

"We need to do something different with this." Sarah said. I agreed. It was then that she thought, "What if the students get to take something off of the rubric?" Sarah's idea was to front load the rubric with standards that we needed to hit, but also with extra standards and little points like, "Project includes original color pictures in display." or "Student cites sources during the presentation."  The idea was that the students would read the rubric line by line to figure out what to cut. We allotted them the opportunity to cut one item per column.  They "cut" it simply by highlighting the item. On presentation day we collected the rubric and graded the student's work holding the very rubric that they had culled. The students loved this idea. It offered them the structure that they wanted, but it afforded them some choice in their own assessment. 

The downside to culling the rubric was that students began to task-list more. Our solution had the opposite effect. Students became so focused on  the bullet points and what they could cut, that the rubric became preeminent. Still, if you are having trouble getting students to read your rubric - this may be the option for you? Our problem, though, still had no solution. Again, my partner and I went back to the drawing board. She came back with this logic:

Goal: We want the students to feel free exceed our expectations on the rubric.

Knows - 

• The students use the rubric like a crutch to task-list. 
• The students do not respond well to zero structure rubrics. (No rubric)
• We have the option of having them create their own rubric. (like Michael)
• This would force the students to do double duty in our class and Michael's, though. 
• We could... 

The light came on. 

We want them to exceed the rubric, right? We want them to Analyze, Synthesize, and Create. So we offer them credit to synthesize it. We give them points to create additional material for the rubric. They will not create a whole rubric, but they will create portions of it.

There are a few ways to do this... 

First, you can leave blank spots in the rubric and ask them to fill them in. If the column has 7 points in it leave two or three blank and tell them to fill them in. Cover your target standards, but let the students fill in things that they would like to add. This also causes the students to think about whether that rubric item is Competent, Experienced, or Master (or whatever you name your columns) level in nature. Students must consider what they're doing as well as assess where their ideas belong on the rubric. It offers structure, but it also offers them some choice and a chance to be creative. This may work better in lower levels or when you are starting to change up your rubric practice to include student choice. 

Sarah's method was to give the students our completed rubric with extra room in the bottom of the columns. She then asked the students to add to it. Each group had to come up with at least one thing for each column. Most students added three or four. Again, we're talking about students assessing their own work, valuing their learning, and being a part of assessment - skills that they will need when they enter the work world.   

A final way to do this, and we have not "road" tested this, is to give the students a rubric with only one column filled out: the master column (or whatever your highest level column is). Leave the rest of the rubric blank except to note your target standards. This causes the students to consider each standard independently and create column items for them. You have given them a template to work from and shown them the ceiling of the work, but they are to fill in the rest of the rubric, including the standards that you have to teach. They will need to consider those standards at a basic level, but also evolve those realizations to accomplish the interior of your rubric.

For example, if the Mastery level is, "Student will compose a minimum of 40 measures at full orchestration, utilizing best practice in voice leading techniques, and text painting." What would be the Experienced (center column)? What would be the Competent (Furthest left) column? Don't allow students to simply say, "Student did not compose a minimum of 40 measures at full orchestration utilizing..." Instead they should a.) keep it in the positive, and b.) shorten the expectation. It should read something like, "Student composes a minimum of 40 measures." Then evolve to 40 measures with full orchestration. Then add voice leading and text painting... The key is to help them to see the progression - to establish the order of the scaffolding. 

Once they've got this down - FLIP it. Give them the very basic column and ask them to create the most advanced items. Let them decided how to advance the work. This is key, because they will have to do this if they achieve the top level of their professional lives. What do you do when you are the very best? How do you get better? Where do you go from there? Those are questions that we all hope our students end up dealing with in the end. Companies like Apple and Google are dealing with that now. Where do we go from here? I can't think of a better way to set our students up for success, than to prepare them to be innovative. 

Which technique should you apply? I suggest that you differentiate. Who is not reading the rubric? Let them cull. Who is producing great work, but not utilizing the standards? Have them complete a rubric with the Mastery level completed but not the lower levels. Who is ready to take things to the next level? Give them a rubric with just the lowest level filled in or let them create their own rubric completely.

Give this a shot at some point. I hypothesize that your students will exceed your expectations. Let your rubric be, not only a tool for assessment, but a tool for instruction as well. That's what it's all about, right? The assessments and feedback are geared toward the ultimate instruction. Who says that has to happen at the end of the project? 

Until next week...   

Science and Music Integrated

Greetings and welcome to another installment of Liquid Logic - STEAM in form and function. You may recall that I promised to discuss Science and Music integration last week. I intend to follow up on that now. If you were unable to read last week's post, you may want to take a look here so you can be up to speed on the discussion.

So, how do music and science connect? 

I view Mathematics and English classes as core classes. What I mean by that is, these two subject areas serve as the backbone for the rest of our learning. Students must know how to read. Students must know how to work sums. I also submit to you that Science, general Science taught at the primary level, is also very core. Students must understand basic and natural processes. I do not imagine any of this to be controversial. 

At the primary level most knowledge is new knowledge. The battle for most primary teachers is comprehension. My parents were both elementary school teachers and they used to fret over whether students understood their lessons. I remember my father saying, "I hope I dug down to their level and brought them up." Learning at this age is very A quadrant, or basic. There is not a lot of higher order thinking going on, and - while I feel it's important to expose students to divergent and higher order items - it's important that they get the basics. As students progress, and I suggest that 6th or 7th grade become the point of transfer for them, it is time to challenge them with more divergent thinking. 

Science is a most interesting subject because it lends itself so nicely to projects. 

Mathematics are glued to their axioms and, while they're able to create real world problems, it is often hard to create consistent relevance enough to create real-world solutions to those problems. In effect, Math is limited by it's resources where applications are concerned. There are only so many ways that you can show a graph. I'm not saying that Mathematics can't utilize projects, I'm simply saying that it is more difficult for them to do so on a full project-based level. 

English has its own set of problems too. There are many options for creation in a 10th grade literature class, but few of them will be useful to mankind. In my years teaching Litmus (Literature + Musicology) we created artistic models, powerpoints, speeches, countless videos, and lots of music. It was difficult to solve real-world problems when the students were reading The Odyssey. Again, we were tied to the content and the context of our work, much like mathematicians are. 

Science, though, is a subject that can reach outside itself. If you think about it, Science is the logic of Mathematics combined with the imagination of Literature. Some of you may scoff at this, but consider: before mankind endeavors to do anything he must first conceive the idea in his mind. A person must have a problem, hypothesize a solution, and then create an experiment and test their idea. In many ways scientists combine the best of the Arts. It is the objective of scientists to realize that which we have only considered. People didn't understand Edison's light bulb when he unveiled it at the World's Fair in 1893, but Edison himself had a vision for his work. Science is the connecting cog between English and Math. 

Integrating Science with music is difficult. While Science lends itself to projects, it's almost too practical. In many ways Music is the anti-thesis to Science. Science lets the student explore within the confines of the hypothesis. Music lets the student explore within the confines of their skill. Both subjects have pretty serious higher order thinking syntheses. Creating Science yields tangible products (rockets, trebuchets, instruments, chemicals) while creating music - unless it's recorded - leaves only the aesthetic experience of having created something and hearing it once. 

The best connection between Science and Music is the process! 

Music utilizes creative process. Science utilizes Scientific Method. Both processes have variables that can be controlled, but also are open to experimentation. Music is the more approachable of the two arts because a mistake in music has no residual effect. A mistake in science could theoretically injure or even kill someone. (Again, I apologize for our lab experiment in College Chemistry, Raj. I am truly sorry about your hair.) 

Scientific Method is a structure centered around a hypothesis, based on observation. In short, the scientist observes something, makes a hypothesis about it, and then runs an experiment to see if their hypothesis is correct. Musicians in the "Lab," so to speak, are utilizing their current knowledge to make calculations - in real  time - based on their observations (which are made through the ears). Then a musician will release their experiment, their sound, and see how it goes with the other parts playing. Let me give you an example. I play bass guitar an awful lot. I play with all kinds of groups - jazz groups, country groups, rock groups, alternative bands, tejano groups... Often when I get with these people, they do not have music for me. Sometimes they do, but most of the time they do not. To a person that needs structure it's very scary to hear the words, "Just play by ear." But a true musician has no problem with this because we understand the system. 

There are only 7 notes in a scale (because 1 and 8 are the same) and 12 total notes if you include the half-steps between notes. That means I have a one in twelve chance of hitting the right note with a blind guess. Now, when I play in certain styles I can expect certain things to happen. For example - Gospel music will utilize flat 7 chords. It is unlikely that I will ever encounter a three chord in rock music, and so on... This narrows down my choices. Using the typical voice leading patterns that humanity has decided work best, I now have myself down to a 1:4 ratio. I am 25% likely to hit the right note.   Experience is the final straw. Usually, because I have played so much, I can tell without ever hearing the song, what the next chord will be. All I have to do now, is set my hand and pluck the string. Then I will know pretty quickly whether or not I've got it. I have to do this for every note of every song for the duration of the show. What I just described to you is a process that happens pretty quickly while I play. Did you notice the similarities between my play process and Scientific Method? Observation. Hypothesis. Calculation. Experiment. Assessment...  

This kind of experimentation is entirely too dynamic for a Science classroom, but not a Music one. 

The best integration projects that I've seen between Science and Music in the Science classroom have been instrument building projects that connect Physics and Manufacturing with Music. Indeed, Physics seems to be the branch of Science that lends itself most readily to Music. Type "Physics + Music + Lessons" into your search engine and you will receive myriad projects with calculations included. My favorite is this one from The Physics Classroom. There are also several lessons on the use of sound waves, sound travel, creation of sound, and manipulation of sound. 

Chemistry teachers may try to make the connection with density and liquid levels. Using glass instruments filled with chemicals and rubbing the edges... makes a sound... kind of neat... This is only one project though; certainly not enough to build a semester of integration. Perhaps there could be something to the elements involved in the creation of instruments? For example, the use of brass alloys to make trumpets, versus the use of nickel or silver alloys; How does this affect the sound? Which trumpet sounds better? Are there uses for the other alloy sound?  

My suggestion is to utilize as much Music as possible in the early stages of Physics. 8th grade Physical Science where students learn foundational Physics is the best place for Music to make appearances in the Science classroom. While I admit that I have had little chance to test these theories, I certainly would feel comfortable going into a Science class and trying. I realize that several of you may be hoping that I would detail a plan for you here, but I don't have one. I see the connection in method, but beyond that I would look to the shared lesson plans on the web and see how you can synthesize them to best assist your students. I'm sorry that I don't have more, but look to the method. The method is the key. Your own driving questions will drive those of your students. And what better way to teach than by example?  

Until next week...